In hospitality, hospital and other residential room maintenance, a substantial amount of time is spent by individual maintenance personnel in cleaning bathroom surfaces such as shower stalls, bathtubs, mirrors, vanities and stools. Bathroom maintenance is commonly conducted on a daily basis if the bathroom is in use. Bathroom maintenance can occupy up to 50% of the time required to complete the daily cleaning of the typical hospitality unit. Cleaning a bathroom is highly labor intensive and involves numerous steps in removing gross soils such as paper products including tissues, spills, shampoo, toothpaste containers, etc. After the initial preparation, maintenance personnel apply cleaners from aerosol or pump sprayers to the surfaces in the bathroom. Cloths, scrubbers, brushes, etc. are then used to apply mechanical action to the surfaces and cleaning materials to remove surface soil. Once the cleaners and soils have been applied by the maintenance personnel, the surfaces are often rinsed and manually dried. Such a procedure is time intensive and, under time pressure, often maintenance personnel reduce attention or can skip one or more steps leaving an incompletely cleaned unit. In bathroom maintenance, cleaning materials are most commonly applied using pressurized aerosol sprays and hand pump sprayers. Rinse water is typically taken from the sink or tub and cleaning cloths, scrub brushes and scrub pads are used to implement soil removal. These maintenance problems are present in maintaining public restrooms in service stations, theaters and other comfort and equivalent locations of public access. Further, institutional and commercial restaurant spaces require at least daily cleaning and maintenance. Further, entryways, windows, food and beverage manufacturing facilities, surgical suites, examining rooms and other locations require cleaning that involve extensive, time-consuming, manual cleaning.
A number of spray systems are known. A large number of systems that can provide a diluted product in a spray form from a concentrate and a diluent have been used in a number of applications. Such systems dispense varied products including adhesives, insecticides, coatings, lubricants and many other varied aqueous and non-aqueous materials. Such products are often blended on site from reactive or non-reactive chemicals and liquid diluents or extenders. In large part, these systems deliver large quantities of materials, have substantially high pressure apparatus that can dispense and are used in painting, agricultural or automotive applications. Such relatively high volume, high pressure pump sprayers are a widely utilized apparatus, for applying a variety of materials, that pose substantial operating problems. The systems are hard to move, difficult to fill, are not applicable to hard surface cleaners or rinse systems, often cannot simply dilute a concentrate, often require a predetermined mix of chemicals, use high pressure pumps, specialized lines and spray apparatus. Levy, U.S. Pat. No. 3,680,786 teaches a mobile cleaning apparatus on a roller frame having an undifferentiated pump and spray portion and a complex system for blending and dispensing liquid materials. Luvisotto, U.S. Pat. No. 4,865,255 discloses a self-contained mobile spraying apparatus for herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, fertilizers and others including an undifferentiated pump and spray system. Fiegel et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,263,223 disclose an apparatus for cleaning interior surfaces that is a large ungainly device having an undifferentiated pump and spray portion in a non-refillable source of aqueous diluent. Other spraying devices are disclosed in Park et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,182,491 which discloses a spraying apparatus including a compressed air source, an undifferentiated source of diluent, etc. Horvath, U.S. Pat. No. 3,964,689 discloses a spray apparatus for dispensing a variety of substances. Coleman, U.S. Pat. No. 4,208,013 describes a portable chemical spraying apparatus with a disposable container using compressed air and a preselected chemical composition. Park et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,900,165 disclose a hand carrier spraying apparatus using pressurized air. Phillips, U.S. Pat. No. 3,454,042 discloses a portable car wash machine using an external water source. Hill, U.S. Pat. No. 3,894,690 describes a complex spraying system for mixing water and a variety of chemicals.
Clark et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,790,454 discloses a self-contained apparatus, that cannot be easily filled and emptied, used for admixing a plurality of liquids. Further, the pumping section does not contain a differentiated wet and dry portion separating the battery pump and wiring from the wet side of the pump tubing and connectors. Clontz, U.S. Pat. No. 5,421,900 discloses a self-contained battery operated spray unit and method for using the same for cleaning air conditioners. The system comprises containers that are not easily fillable and emptiable and further contains an undifferentiated spray and pumping section in which there is no defined wet and dry portion.
A substantial need exists to improve cleaning processes in the hospitality bathroom and other similar locations of daily manual maintenance. A substantial need exists to reduce the time and effort required to complete such a cleaning process. A substantial improvement in the application of cleaners to hard surfaces is needed to ensure that each bathroom is cleaned satisfactorily for the user. Further, any improvement in productivity will be welcomed by the guests and hotel management.
In addition, the concentrate that is used for cleaning or other purposes is diluted, depending upon the application, cleaning standards of the user, hardness of the water, etc. Therefore, it is necessary to periodically adjust the concentration level of the use solution being dispensed from the portable cleaning system. A typical hotel or similar establishment may have up to fifteen to thirty portable units that are being used u simultaneously. If it is necessary to adjust the concentrate level of each portable unit, this is a very time consuming process, expensive, and subject to quality control issues. To make the individual units easily adjustable by the user is not an easy task and leaves open the possibility of having incorrectly adjusted units. Therefore, a system which would adjust for such changes in concentration is needed. The present invention addresses these problems and provides for a two-step dilution method and apparatus for accomplishing this task.
In addition, it is recognized that the invention has applicability to many other areas where the ability to control the concentration of a chemical, or two or more chemicals, through a variety of secondary devices. There are many cleaning and coating product systems which are water dilutable or extendable to which the present application would be applicable. These would include car cleaning and spotting, carpet cleaning and spotting, glass and window cleaning, building exterior applications, airplane cleaning and maintenance, fungicide, disinfectant and insecticide applications, pest elimination spraying, lawn and garden, animal care and application of product for animate surfaces. It is applicable to most spraying applications where portability is helpful.
In addition, there is often a large turnover in the cleaning personnel who utilize any cleaning equipment. In applying any cleaning agents, it is necessary that enough cleaning agents actually be utilized to fully clean bathtub, shower, sink, etc. However, the over application of too much cleaning agents will only result in increased costs with very little added benefit of doing a better cleaning job.